The subject matter disclosed herein relates to industrial control systems and, more particularly, to securing the operation of industrial control systems.
Industrial control systems, such as power generation and transmission systems (e.g., wind, water, and gas turbine systems) and manufacturing systems (e.g., petroleum refineries, chemical manufacturing plants, and the like) are a common feature of modern industry. For such industrial control systems, an industrial controller may generally control the operation of the system. For example, certain devices in the industrial control system (e.g., sensors, pumps, valves, actuators, and the like) may be controlled by, and may report data to, the industrial controller. Furthermore, the industrial controller may execute instructions (e.g., firmware and/or applications) that may generally enable the industrial controller to control the operation of the industrial control system (e.g., a gas turbine system). These instructions may be provided by the manufacturer of the industrial controller. For example, these instructions may be loaded onto the industrial controller before it is installed in the industrial control system. Additionally, industrial controller may offer several different methods of accessing and/or providing instructions to the industrial controller, such as via a network connection or a local port.
If an unauthorized party could gain access to an industrial controller (either physically or through a communications network), the security of the entire industrial control platform might be compromised. For example, the unauthorized party might alter software such that operation of an industrial asset is degraded and/or possibly damage the asset. In some cases, a network security service may help prevent such unauthorized access to client devices (e.g., industrial controllers). For example, an attestation server might verify the integrity of software running on various client devices. If the network security service itself becomes compromised, however, this protection could be circumvented. It would therefore be desirable to provide systems and methods to protect a network security service associated with an industrial control platform.